


CRUMBS & BRACKETS

by Titania58



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery (Video Game)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Comfort Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Intense, Love Triangles, POV Charlie Weasley, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Smut, Spanking, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:34:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27859174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Titania58/pseuds/Titania58
Summary: The battle of Hogwarts was over.  The euphoria of Harry Potter's victory over Voldemort had given way to sorrow at the price paid for the birth of this new world bathed in light. It was time to bury the dead. And to mourn them.Unlike the rest of his family,  Charlie was left to grieve alone.Until a caring hand reached out to him...NB: This fiction can be enjoyed without necessarily having played the HPHogwartsMystery game.
Relationships: Barnaby Lee/Player Character, Charlie Weasley/Original Character(s), Charlie Weasley/Original Female Character(s), Player Character (Hogwarts Mystery) & Charlie Weasley, Player Character (Hogwarts Mystery)/Charlie Weasley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	CRUMBS & BRACKETS

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Miettes & parenthèses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26659684) by [Titania58](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Titania58/pseuds/Titania58). 



> Hello,
> 
> This is a translation of a text originally published in French. 
> 
> Please forgive the awkwardness that you will probably find in this translation essay. 
> 
> Enjoy !

How many more funeral services did he have to attend?  
How many dead? And among them, how many loved ones?

The battle of Hogwarts was over. The euphoria of Harry Potter's victory over Voldemort had given way to sorrow at the price paid for the birth of this new world, bathed in light. It was time to bury the dead.  
And to mourn them. 

Charlie stared blankly at the coffin waiting to be put in the ground, while his father, in a hoarse voice, praised the most turbulent Weasley son, Fred.  
His mother sobbed in Percy's arms, Bill hugged his beloved wife, Ron clung desperately to Hermione, Ginny cried silently in the arms of Harry Potter and George... He had refused to come, arguing that these funeral celebrations did not pay tribute to the sparkling character of his twin who was nothing but laughter and facetious. The dragonologist suspected that he was preparing an unruly homage of which he had the secret. Like a burlesque firework or a spectacular moving cloud of confetti...

As for Charlie, he remained alone, straight, stiff as Justice. Ever since the battle, whose appalling images were sometimes modelled on the reality that surrounded him, the redhead supported his battered family and responded to various requests by assisting his parents. He once again demonstrated his devotion by putting the needs of the Weasley clan before his own. He played his role: that of an affable man that neither war nor death could shake. After all, he was fighting dragons every day... or not. 

He mingled with the crowd that went to the Burrow at the invitation of his mother. With his characteristic kindness, he received the many condolences that offered no comfort to his torments. The red-haired man grew weary. 

He untied the tie his mother had made him wear and leaned against a wall. 

His gaze turned to Barnaby and Jacob's sister who comforted themselves with the intimacy characteristic of "exes". To their great regret, they had broken up two years earlier in the face of the difficulty of keeping their relationship stable due to the frustrating incompatibility of their schedules. Too much mutual love bound them together to tear them apart, but the break-up had deeply shaken Barnaby to the point of making him vulnerable to the toxic influence of his parents, Voldemort's fervent supporters. And one night, the witch had infiltrated the lair of the Death eaters and kicked Barnaby back to the right path. However, something had broken between them that night. No one ever knew why. Distant love had turned into an overprotective friendship punctuated by nostalgic frolics.

Charlie was not judging them. Everyone had the right to deceive his loneliness as best they could. He did it by making a series of one-night stands, conscious that his devouring passion for dragons was not compatible with a love relationship. It was also easier to become attached to dragons because they were difficult to kill. Not like humans who could die from a blow with a stick, or scree. Like Fred, Tonks, Remus, Chiara... And so many others. 

The redhead sighed, went into the kitchen, took a bottle of whisky from a cupboard, and went out. He needed air. All those bows and turns that his parents bent to respect the label suddenly repulsed him. He needed some time for himself. The time that he hadn't had time to take because of his responsibilities as a wizard of the Order, as a brother, a son, a friend, or a dragonologist. 

Charlie went out onto the porch, uncorked her bottle, and drank a long drink.  
The fire burned his throat. The redhead felt it descend to his stomach, rekindling the flame of his life that flickered on that day of mourning. He drank to Fred, to Tonks, to Remus, to Chiara, to all the dead. He also drank from the living, crippled or not, who had to cauterise the gaping wounds that the dead created in their bruised hearts. 

Suddenly, two arms gently embraced her waist, and a female body pressed against his back. He sniffed the scent of jasmine mixed with sandalwood.

"You're not staying with Barnaby?" Charlie said.  
" He's in good hands... Not you."

A thin bitter smile stretched Charlie's lips. Understanding and comfort. Indeed, he needed it. He turned to his friend and embraced her with the strength of immeasurable silent grief. Without tears. The witch gently took his unshaven face in her cupped hands. Her thumbs lovingly caressed his freckled cheekbones. 

"Do you want to talk ?"  
"Do you want to drink ?" he answered, shaking his bottle of spirits. 

She grabs it and takes a generous gulp from the neck. The fire of the whisky heated her sweet face. Then she spilt some on the floor. 

"To the health of the dead."  
"To the health of the dead," Charlie repeated in a voice weighed down by alcohol.

He glanced over his shoulder at the door that let the hubbub inside the house. 

"I can't take this crowd anymore." 

Charlie was naturally sociable. This quality had earned him a mission from Dumbledore to recruit foreign allies to the Order. He had led them into battle and some of them had only come back between the sticks. One more burden on his broad shoulders. Charlie needed a break, to refocus on himself. 

His friend presented her open palm in a silent invitation to grab it. The redhead was quick to accept the escape she offered him. They disappeared into a dark vortex that cracked like a whip and reappeared in front of a seemingly banal house. Her house.

He had already been there in times so remote that he wondered if his memories were not just a dream. It was a time of happy evenings with old friends, carefree dinners with friends... They came in. 

At last... Silence. 

The witch took two glasses and a bottle of strong alcohol while he fell heavily on the couch. Charlie looked at his own bottle. Empty. The dead had been very thirsty!  
He drank from the served glass in one go and filled it again. A leaden silence settled in. Everyone lost in dark thoughts that none of them was ready to deliver. 

"The mouth of Merlin ! Fred is dead !" 

Saying it out loud made the tragedy more real. More painful, too. It was probably the signal his friend was waiting for to surround him with her arms in which Charlie gave himself up without restraint.

She cried silently. Like him, the witch had lost loved ones in the tumult of battle, stepped over mutilated corpses, saved her life by stealing the lives of others. Charlie didn't need words to understand that the same suffering clutched their hearts with her icy fingers. His sight blurred and their tears mingled in their embrace. 

The red-haired man did not know too well how their mouths trembled with grief found. But the fact was there. Sharing the same breath, they kissed as if even the morrow had died, their tongues intertwining their sorrow more intimately. Their feverish hands redrew the body of the other, warm and supple under their fingers. Neither cold nor stiff. Intact. Sitting astride him, she unbuttoned his shirt, which he hurriedly took off before rolling up her robe until he could put it over the witch's head. 

She devoured his mouth again by biting her lower lip to force its opening and assail it with her tongue. Charlie greeted the painful pinch as a blessing that reassured him of his existence. To be in pain meant to be alive. 

"Charlie... Fuck me, please..."  
"You've been drinking." 

This objection did not prevent him from tracing a furrow of burning kisses along her neck, where the flow of life pulsed forcefully under his lips. 

"You need it." she contrasts by opening his trousers stretched with a prominent desire that she caressed. "And so do I." 

Charlie put his hand on the witch's cheek and caught her wet look.

"No !" he said in an irrevocable tone. "You need to forget." 

She shrugged her shoulders. "And not you ?" 

The ginger let his actions speak for him by drawing her against his greedy mouth. She lifted herself so that he could raise his hips to completely release his burning cock. Instead of wallowing in his grief in the intoxication of alcohol, he could just as easily drown it in the intoxication of sex. With the assurance of one less hangover. 

She undulated on him, exciting their respective intimacy with the only barrier being the black lace of her panties. 

Charlie took off the witch's bra, crushed her breasts against each other, and took them in turn in his mouth, enjoying their velvety softness under his lips. She breathed in the air with a hiss as he bit the swollen tips of desire before soothing them with her tongue. She defeated his catogan, grabbed his hair with warm copper highlights, and forced him to lift his emaciated face towards hers. Her tongue plunged into him and sensually fucked his mouth. He groaned. Panting, he found his groping wand and interrupted the kiss. 

The rest of the lace disappeared under the effect of a disappearing spell and his cock rubbed against hot and wet folds. His hand snaked between them to slip two fingers into the wet well of the young woman ready to receive it. The man collected some of her honey, which he tasted under the glassy gaze of the witch. The bitter-sweet flavour was perfectly suited to the atmosphere of the moment. 

"Ride me !" 

She got up and slowly fell back on his erection which he directed with his hand. A moan of ecstasy escaped Charlie. She sensually undulated her hips allowing his tail to nestle comfortably inside her while he played with her clitoris. Her fairy fingers burned his skin, scarred his scars, brushed against the discreet fleece of his torso, outlined his muscles, and pinched his nipples. She even scratched him in places, on the line between pain and pleasure. The breath jerked, the redhead tightened in lust. The rhythm and amplitude of her lover's comings and goings rose to a crescendo. With her nails anchored in his torso, she soon began to bounce wildly on his cock. Charlie would never have suspected her of such ardour! Neither such a hot body... 

"Oh! Yes... like that !" 

His outstretched hand played with one breast while the other danced before his eyes, to the rhythm of his groans. His sex relentlessly set fire to her wet well which she contracted intermittently to intensify their pleasure. His other calloused hand-whipped a fleshy buttock, the witch hiccuped. The impact made her vibrate deliciously around him. Charlie gasped before crushing her against his chest and kissing her on the lips, wiggling his hips ferociously inside her.

"It's so good !" she blew between kisses. "Charlie..." 

Yes, but it wasn't enough. He needed more. So Charlie asked her to get down on all fours. Standing behind her, he grabbed her hips, gave her a powerful kidney stroke and his pelvis hammered her buttocks. Under the effort, sweat was beading on his skin. 

"Oh! Please ! Don't stop."  
"Yes! Cum for me !" he panted. 

Suddenly she bent down and a fulgurant orgasm tore her to pieces in a cry, which was echoed in the litany that followed.  
Strongly sheathed in her femininity, the insatiable sorcerer was desperate to satisfy his still unsatisfied imperious need. So he left no respite and continued his assaults against the reddened croup that came to meet him in a concert of screams, wet noises, skillfully administered slaps, and grunts. 

So Charlie forgot the horrors and the tears. Their moans and cries of ecstasy covered the clash of evil spells and the agonizing groans of a fierce battle that still echoed in his head. The taste of his honey surpassed that of the haemoglobin that had invaded his mouth at the heart of the battle. The pungent smell of sex permeating the room dissipated the stench of death and charred flesh that haunted his nostrils. And the power of the witch's orgasm reminded her that a body could also convulse in pleasure. 

With each stroke, Charlie reaffirmed his existence in a primitive, animal impulse. An impulse of life.

"Oh, fuck..." she stammered.  
"Cum with me !"

The orgasmic reply of his lover made him explode. He discharged his seed, and some of his torments, in a few thrusts accompanied by a cry resembling more a roar than a human sound. As soon as Charlie loosened her hips, the woman collapsed, like a disarticulated doll. He collapsed half on top of her with a foggy mind. Empty, exhausted, and soothed.

A discreet jolt against him alarms him. The witch was burying her face in her hands. He caressed her back with solicitude. 

"Hey! Are you okay ?" 

She nodded and sniffed. "It's nothing... Stupid emotions... too... too much..." 

She was at a loss for words. 

"Intense?" he proposed.  
"Yeah."

It was not difficult to understand. The intensity of their frolicking had caused such a release that emotions that had been locked up until then had been released. The red-haired man scanned the redness and bluish marks appearing where he had grasped her so firmly. Charlie, too, had completely surrendered himself to the passion and this had brought him some respite and a dark sense of well-being. 

"If I had known there was such a fire in you, I would have checked the "friends with benefits" option much sooner," he joked to distract her. 

She puffed as she wiped her face before turning it towards the redhead who wrapped her in an embrace. They remained silent for a long time, in a comforting intimacy. 

"Come to the Reserve with me," he whispered, kissing her hair. 

She shook her head in his shoulder. "I'm leaving for Brazil in a week."  
"So, let's leave tomorrow and stay with me. Nothing like baby dragons to cheer you up! It's birth time !" 

A long silence answered him. 

"Come with me... Just a parenthesis to change air, to heal... A parenthesis to forget... And you're not going to stay to ruminate all alone in this empty house anyway?!" 

The last sentence made her gaze wavering at him. The kiss he offered her was enough to convince her.

" OK."

He kept it with him for a while before taking a shower. 

" I'll pick you up tomorrow at eight o'clock. "

XxxxxxxxxxxX 

He soon arrived at the burrow. Barnaby's imposing figure was waiting, sitting on the stoop. He sat down next to the brown. 

"You were with her."Barnaby said  
" Yes."  
" You fucked."  
" Yes, but... Shit! How do you know that?"  
" You can smell her shower gel," explained the magizoologist.  
" Oh !" 

An uncomfortable silence settled in. Barnaby's haunted gaze was lost in the blades of grass at the bottom of the stairs. His face was tense and his posture stiff. 

" We're friends but I won't apologise," announced the redhead. "We didn't plan anything... It just happened."  
"No need for excuses," confirmed Barnaby. "As long as she's all right..."  
" You still love her."  
"Never mind," grumbled the brown. "We'll never get back together."  
"Because of what happened when she picked you up from your parents ?" 

The athletic man showed his strength once again when his fist tightened on his glass and the glass shattered under pressure. The redhead took out his wand.  
"Reparo".

"Sorry... What do you know about it? Did she tell you about it ?"  
"No, but everyone can see that something has happened." 

Barnaby pinched his lips and swirled the amber liquid he had just poured into his glass. 

"When she arrived at the lair, I was no longer myself... I was a black mage under my father's imperium. To free me, she... I was there... She made a deal."  
"A deal? What kind of market? Nothing that involves betrayal, I hope !"  
"She has never betrayed anyone !" Barnaby was outraged. "But if I say so, I die." 

Charlie raised a circumspect eyebrow. His friend's grave expression informed him of the literal meaning of this terrible assertion. "An Inviolable Oath ?" 

The brown nodded and Charlie wondered why the terms of the agreement were so awful that their friend demanded secrecy under deadly oath. 

"She could have used an amnesia spell."  
" I refused... I am responsible for what happened. To forget is to insult what it cost him to get me out of there." Barnaby said

Living each day with his guilty conscience was Barnaby's way of atoning for his mistakes. 

" You don't have to do this to yourself and I'm sure she doesn't blame you." 

Barnaby grimaced with a bitter grin." She tries not to hold it against me. But something inside her has broken and I know - she knows - that it's largely my fault. Because nothing would have happened if I hadn't tried to reach my parents, despite her warnings."

The witch was suffering from an unwanted involuntary resentment which forbade her any romantic involvement with the magizoologist. Charlie shook his head. One only aspired to forget when the other religiously retained the same painful memory. No wonder they had become so incompatible. 

"And those who are aware of this agreement?"  
"She is now the only one who can talk about it. And I am currently the only one who can listen to her." 

Barnaby takes a sip. And the Weasley decided he didn't want to know any more. Sometimes it was better to close one's eyes to a truth too heavy to bear. 

" No matter what there is between you, know that I won't give up the crumbs that she agrees to leave me in memory of the past." 

The dragonologist raised his palms in a sign of appeasement.

"Oh! Laaaa! If the crumbs you're talking about refer to your casual sex, let's be clear, Barnaby: we fucked together and since she accepted my invitation to spend a few days in Romania, I think I can say without sounding pretentious that we'll do it again. But what is going on between you two does not concern me."

XxxxxxxxxxxX 

The week had gone by at breakneck speed. At first, the young people had enjoyed this environment where nothing reminded them of the tragedies that had befallen them. This made it easier to admit that life went on. 

Charlie had shown his daily life in the service of the dragons he cherished so much. He had knocked out the evil reminiscences by sharing his knowledge with his temporary pupil who had eagerly immersed himself in this entertaining learning. 

Together they had driven away from the spectres of war that haunted them. They had forgotten themselves in each other's arms, too. Often. Sometimes wildly, sometimes sadly, sometimes with a sweetness they rediscovered together. Always with a devouring need. Moreover, the redhead had surprised himself by appreciating the presence of the witch in his wake to the point of hoping that time would stop its course so that this parenthesis would last forever. 

This human warmth brought him addictive comfort, rekindling a flame that even a dragon could not rekindle. He who had never needed anyone in his life felt the need for her. It was disturbingly new. 

Also, when Charlie woke up alone in bed after a torrid night of farewell, the absence of the young woman weighed on him. All that remained was the smell of jasmine on his cold pillow, which he breathed in for a long time and the scars of their carnal relations on his skin. 

None of them was ready to start a relationship. Maybe, they never would be. First, they had to repair themselves, cauterize the wounds of the soul and heal from their trauma.

Both were in the image of this world: in reconstruction. 

However, they could always offer themselves other beneficent parentheses... On the strength of this conclusion, the redhead decided to send an owl and got up to write a missive. 

An envelope with his calligraphic name was enthroned on the desk. Moved by a feverish curiosity, he unsealed it and discovered a parchment where the image of a Chinese Fireball came to life and spat out a flame that took the form of a message in letters of fire. For the first time in a long time, his lips stretched with a frank and sincere smile that even reached his eyes. 

On the parchment: two dates in the near future, in brackets. Followed by a question mark.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for your reading !
> 
> I hope my little mistakes didn't make the reading too unpleasant ... Please let me know if any of them burn your eyes too much  
> And feel free to react with ❤, bookmarks or a comment !  
> Even if it's only to say that you liked it. It means so much to the author! 😉  
> Thank you !  
> Other stories about Charlie Weasley are available on my profile. 😉


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